


Primaddona

by cozyquartz



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anxiety, F/F, M/M, Modern AU, OC-centric, mental health, will be gay as all hell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 11:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cozyquartz/pseuds/cozyquartz
Summary: Modern AU where TAZ: Balance is a newly released film starring our fave horny boys.





	1. Lady with an Attitude

Almost blinded by the flashing lights on them, Apollo couldn’t help but laugh under her breath at the ridiculousness of it all. They were only there because her dipshit brother had the right friends.  
Granted, he was decently talented and, even though it pained her to admit it, kind of killed his part in a movie that was trending to be way more successful than they originally expected.  
The true irony was being her brother’s plus-one, standing on a red carpet and having her picture taken- really taken- for the first time, even though she was-  
Apollo cut that thought short. As much as she loved to bitch about her little brother, it was his moment and he kind of deserved it. 

The marquee read; “The Adventure Zone: Balance” brightly advertising the premier event that was currently taking place. Magnus, Taako, and Merle wouldn’t be showing up for some time, being the main roles and all that. Artemis was a background character at best, but it was also his first role that wasn’t in an old classmate’s “indie film” that would never make it to Sundance.  
The Adventure Zone decided to use the actor’s names for the roles they were cast in; the first time having a douchey name like ‘Artemis Sterling’ worked in his favor. Their parents were absolute dorks and decided to name their children Artemis and Apollo, after greek mythology. But they had to gender-bend it, because why the fuck not? 

Artemis was a year and a half younger than her, so she felt a sense of pride that she would never admit to when she saw him flash his pearly whites for the cameras. They had taken a few photos together first, getting him warmed up to the experience before letting her walk ahead of him. She was his plus one- but a better term would be “emotional support.”  
Not that she was fully comfortable there, she felt much more vulnerable than any other time she’d stood in front of photographers at similar events. 

She fiddled with her acrylics, keeping her hand at her side. It was easier being emotional support than being the one drawing the attention. That was why she’d tried so hard to stay lowkey. But no one would care about the background character’s sister. No one would be swarming her for answers to questions that she would instead ignore. 

Artemis held his arm out for her when he finally was ushered forward. She rested her arm in his and they walked into the theater for the moment he’d quite literally waited his whole life for.

\--

It was the next day and Artemis wouldn’t stop googling his own name. He scrolled through google image search and twitter moments until he’d seen everything at least ten times, and then looked again.

“Dude. You’ve seen it all. Cool down.” Apollo didn’t look up from her own phone, playing Candy Crush. (She was a committed person and would not let that damn game die).  
“I’m just excited, dude. Let me live,” he huffed, “It’s not like you don’t google yourself constantly. You pretend you don’t love the attention but we all know you’re into it.” He looked at her knowingly.  
“It’s different!”  
“Mmmhhmmmmm.”

“Pizza!” Magnus stormed through the front entrance, letting himself in, as usual.  
Apollo jumped up, grabbing a slice from the box before he even had a chance to set it on the counter.  
“Magnus, can you please make fun of my brother for googling himself all day? He needs to hear it from someone who isn’t his own flesh and blood.”

Apollo knew full well that big bear Magnus was too nice to actually ridicule Artemis in any way, but she also knew that mentioning the way Artemis had spent his day would cause him enough embarrassment that Magnus didn’t have to say anything.  
Artemis went bright red from the apple of his cheeks to the tips of his ears.  
“Aw c’mon Polly, he’s just excited is all.”  
“Magnus- I swear to god, if you ever let that word out of your mouth you will never see the light of day again. I know where you sleep and I am not afraid of you.”  
“Fuckin yikes, okay, Apollo, loud and clear.”

“Thank the gods you brought pizza,” the voice from behind her made her jump.  
The only acknowledgment that Merle got for his arrival was Magnus handing him a plate with two slices already on it. Merle then helped himself to the table, equally as silent and nonchalant. 

Apollo rolled her eyes. She’d grown up with Magnus, who had been one of Artemis’s friends since childhood. Now that Magnus had “made it,” he’d started bringing his Hollywood friends along too. Artemis was delighted as all hell. All those two shit-for-brains had ever wanted was to grow up and be famous actors. They had a blood pact that whoever did it first would help the other score a role. Thus, Lord Artemis Sterling was hired for TAZ: Balance. 

None of his new Hollywood chums knew anything about Apollo, besides Magnus, obviously. She was a secretive ass bitch who pretended she was a little reclusive because she wasn’t interested; the truth was she had pretty intense social anxiety. She’d never admitted it to anyone besides Magnus and Artemis, and until recently, she hadn’t fully admitted it to herself.  
So she kept withdrawn when the guys all showed up, starting to be more of a daily affair. She shut her bedroom door- never locked- and plucked her guitar with her headphones on. It was electric, so only she could hear what was going on. 

Today, however, she let herself hang around the crew. She was trying to actually be supportive, after all. 

“Hey, sunshine! What got you out of your cave? Done brooding for the day?”  
“Don’t make me regret it, Taako.” Apollo half-sneered in his direction.  
“Don’t listen to him, he’s moodier than you could ever be.”  
“Trust me, Lup, I stopped listening to him the day I met him.”

Lup was someone that Apollo would actually consider a friend. She didn’t have many friends, given the crippling social anxiety and all, but Lup was somehow different. She and Barry were one of the better things that came out of this whole experience. She’d actually played her music for Lup a couple of times, which she rarely did for anyone. 

Lup snorted in response to Apollo’s quip. The gang was all here, apparently for an event that Apollo wasn’t privy to the orchestration of.  
That event, it turned out, was literally just pizza and card games. Like 40-year-old soccer moms gathering on bunko day. Thankfully, Taako had brought tequila. He was at least consistent in that regard. You could never expect Taako to show up anywhere empty-handed. Whether it was booze or bud, he had a way of making sure you weren’t sober if you didn’t have to be.  
Apollo lifted the bottle out of his hand and brought it towards the cabinet where they kept their shot glasses. She poured herself one- mmm make that two, before offering to pour some for the rest of the crew. 

After a *thrilling* night of low stakes poker with her brother’s friends, Apollo was more than wasted enough to forget she was so stressed.

“You’re more fun with alcohol, Apollo” Taako barely got the words out before he was hit in the shoulder by his twin sister, “fuck, Lup! It’s true. Girl’s gotta learn to loosen up.”

“Not listening,” Apollo stuck her tongue out at easily the most annoying person in the room. Possibly in her life, but Artemis held that spot indefinitely. “You’re just mad that I whipped your ass.”  
“So what if I am? You can’t whoop my ass if you’re locked away from the action.” Taako smirked, “But- for the record- I’m not.”  
“He’s lying. He hates your guts right now.” Lup shared a knowing look with Apollo, who laughed in response.  
“I know.”


	2. Your Dreams Will Open Up the Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why was Apollo being so shady in chapter one? And who the hell is Vogue?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay look i'm doing my best- it's been a long time. i know there isn't a lot of canon-character action, especially in this chapter, but we just have to get the OCs back story out of the way and then we'll be smooth sailing into true AU territory.

The brother-sibling duo had moved to LA about 3 years ago, now. It hardly took any time at all for Artemis to follow his best friend to the coast after Magnus had been picked up by a talent scout. All Artemis waited for was his degree.

Apollo, regretfully, never finished school. She started, she really tried, but she couldn’t decide on a major and she couldn’t get herself to care about the end goal. She was only there to live up to a standard that she hadn’t set for herself. 

So when Artemis decided to move out of their shitty two-bedroom in Dallas to move to an even shittier place in LA, Apollo followed. She was sure as hell not going to stay back home by their parents without him.

It was shortly after taking residence in California that Apollo’s life really started to change. She’d been tinkering around with instruments and creating music since she was young. She never expected anything to come from it, she just wasn’t good enough. And she definitely wasn’t made for fame. At all. 

But one song on her Soundcloud caught traction and suddenly she had a lot of streams. She had made something that people actually wanted to listen to. It was extremely validating. 

Once one song started spreading around, the rest built up in stream counts as well.

Thankfully, she’d never put any identifiers on her Soundcloud profile. 

Just her username;

Vogue.

Her face and her real name were completely absent. Apparently, people were into that. It’s not like anyone was speculating about her identity- they just appreciated the mystery of it. Who was Vogue, other than a collection of songs?

So she kept creating. Releasing songs with no warning, like she was Beyonce or Lana Del Rey or some shit. People loved it. She didn’t have many fans, but she had tapped into a niche of listeners who seemed to really care about what she was putting out there. 

This gave her the confidence to play something at an open mic. 

But only after she’d come up with a way to hide.

Yes, she felt validated and proud of herself, but that didn’t take away the pure terror she knew she would feel as soon as she stepped in front of anyone. 

She went to every thrift store in town before finding  _ it _ . A black wedding veil that looked like it would have been worn in the early 1900s. 

It was a thick mesh, thick enough that you couldn’t see through it. It fell all the way around her head, attached at the top by a headband that could only be described as a rose gold version of the daisy crowns she mad as a child. The length of it was so it rested just below her collar bone but left her shoulders visible. 

She prepared the backing track and downloaded it to a flash drive. She mixed all the music herself, using her guitar, a keyboard, and a beat pad she bought herself when she graduated high school some years ago.

Her music was made to flatter her high soprano voice, with sharp beats and a pop style that counteracted the lyrics she wove like shitty poetry. 

\--

The night of the open mic, Apollo had a full-blown panic attack. She refused to let that stop her, for once in her life. She downed a couple of shots of fireball before getting the courage to hand her drive to the guy in charge of the whole thing.

She sang the song that finally gave her confidence; the first song of hers that people had found and enjoyed.

_ A pretty face with words like those _

_ It’s a tragedy, babe _

_ A pretty face with a heart of stone, _

_ It’s a tragedy love _

_ You’re a traitor to your own heart _

_ I would’ve risked it all for you _

_ You broke me down from the very start _

_ I was dead and you killed me again _

_ It doesn't matter what bullshit you throw _

_ In the end, all of us know _

_ Those who love you _

_ Will love you still _

_ Leave me to my own absurdity _

_ For you, I’d stand as tall as Antigone  _

There was a warm reception for her performance. She caught someone in the back of the cafe holding their phone in a position that was a dead giveaway- they’d been recording the whole time she sang.

\-- 

She woke up the next morning to realize the video she’d seen being recorded had sprung up on twitter. At noon it already had 10k retweets, and the replies were filled with users commenting on her hidden appearance. 

And so it began. 

\--

Push came to shove and all too suddenly she was playing local shows at bars, and then local shows at concert venues, and eventually, she was contacted by a manager who promised to help her reach stardom without pushing her boundaries.

Lucretia was a dark woman with a motherly aura, yet was somehow intimidating at the same time. She told Apollo that she understood the fear that kept her face hidden and decided to use it to their advantage. 

Vogue was an enigma that gripped social media users with the need for more. In an age when all of the world’s information was available at your fingertips, the  _ not knowing  _ left people dying for an answer. 

Apollo had the answer. Vogue was just a made-up concept that she could hide behind. There was something about being behind a veil that made her forget how afraid she was.

Which is why she kept it a secret. From everyone besides Lucretia, Artemis, and Magnus.

She needed someone to go to about it all besides her literal manager, and she could never tell Artemis anything without it getting to Magnus, so she bit the bullet herself.

Luckily, she knew Magnus would keep her secret to the grave. He was a good friend like that. 

Her career moved faster than she could have imagined in her wildest dreams, and honestly, faster than she was comfortable with. One moment she was just a viral video on twitter, the next she was opening for popular bands at their LA shows. Blackbear, Transviolet, Quinn XCII. She was always the  _ opener’s  _ opener, but still. She was welcomed in front of crowds who were bustling in, waiting for someone else, but listening to her. And, if she was reading the room right, they were  _ enjoying  _ listening to her, too.

Then she went on tour. She was still just an opener, and it was just a west coast tour, but damn it was exciting. She was opening for FLETCHER; they performed a total of 7 shows up and down California with a stop in Seattle and Portland. 

By the time Artemis landed his role in TAZ: Balance, she had a real name for herself in the music industry. She was invited to events, but she rarely went (much to Lucretia’s dismay). She just- wasn’t ready. 

She still didn’t speak at her shows. She had pre-recorded with gentle distortions everything she would assume she’d want to say and programmed them into her beat pad. 

Even as her popularity was rising, she refused to go on any real headlining tours. Again, Lucretia hated this. However, it didn’t seem to stop the influx of Twitter mentions and followers. Somehow, people liked that she was so unattainable that only a handful of audience’s had seen her live. Her first self-titled EP was dropped in full on streaming services and she was definitely active on social media, but she made no notion that she’d be performing any shows any time soon. 

  
Which was why she was so on edge at the TAZ: Balance premier. It wasn’t the first time she’d had photos taken of her for publications, but it  _ was  _ the first time she’d actually had her face in the photos. Vogue was a name on everyone’s lips, but her face was still a sacred thing that she kept to herself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I imagine Vogue to sound like Terror Jr. She's also heavily based on Elohim, who you should please check out on twitter @elohimmusic because she's amazing k thx


End file.
